Northeast Malakula, or Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin, is a dialect chain spoken on the islands of Uripiv, Wala, Rano, and Atchin and on the mainland opposite to these islands. Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin is spoken today by about 9,000 people. Literacy rate of its speakers in their own language is 10–30%.
Uripiv-Wala-Rano-Atchin forms a dialect chain. The Uripiv dialect is the most southerly of these and has 85% of its words in common with Atchin, the most northerly dialect. Uripiv is spoken on the north-east coast of Malakula.
The Uripiv dialect is one of the few documented languages that use the rare bilabial trill, a feature that is not found in the Atchin dialect.
Phonology
Consonants
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | |||||
| Plosive/ Affricate |
voiceless | p | pʷ | t | tʃ | k |
| prenasal | ᵐb | ᵐbʷ | ⁿd | ᵑɡ | ||
| Fricative | β | s | ||||
| Nasal | m | mʷ | n | ŋ | ||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||
| Trill | voiced | r | ||||
| prenasal | ᵐʙ | (ⁿᵈr) | ||||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Approximant | w | j | ||||
| Labial | Alveolar | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | pʷ | t | k |
| prenasal | ᵐb | ᵐbʷ | |||
| Affricate | ts | ||||
| Fricative | β | s | |||
| Nasal | m | mʷ | n | ŋ | |
| Trill | r | ||||
| Lateral | l | ||||
| Approximant | w | ||||
- Some speakers may pronounce sounds /s, ts/ as [ʃ, tʃ] in free variation.[3]
Vowels
- Sounds /e, o, œ/ are heard as [ɛ, ɔ, ə] in unstressed closed-syllable position.[3]
References
- ^ Northeast Malakula at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- ^ a b c Lynch, John (2020). The Phonological History of Uripiv, an Eastern Malakula Language. Language & Linguistics in Melanesia 38. pp. 10–37.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ a b c d Duhamel, Marie (2010). The Noun Phrase of Atchin: A language of Malakula Vanuatu (PDF). University of Auckland.
Further reading
- Duhamel, Marie (2015) Ethnolinguistic vitality of the language of Atchin, central Vanuatu: A survey of the language's status, institutional support and demography. Fourth International Workshop on the Sociolinguistics of Language Endangerment. Payap University.
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This page was last edited on 9 December 2023, at 23:00